Much is written about value creation, particularly with the intention of maximizing the return on shareholder investment. This strategic intent is typically approached in a logical, rational, cognitive manner and yet, so many companies fail to deliver on their value creation plans. Why is that? What is missing? First of all, value shifts from one domain to another all the time and most companies do not see the shift. Often they fail to see that value migrates from an outmoded business design to a new business design that creates better utility for the customers. Value migrates for several reasons: changing customer priorities, growing sophistication of customers in defining their wants and needs, and the increasingly large number of choices that customers have to meet their needs. In turn, globalization leads to creating new markets, changing socio-economic trends and the emergence of new technologies and business designs that fuel the movement of value out of various industry segments into totally different sectors. Lastly and quite significantly there is another driver of value shift: the employees of corporate America who are leaving the scene to create new businesses with venture capital, and others who stay behind, get disillusioned with the mixed messages from employers who claim that employees are their best competitive advantage in the knowledge-based economy, and yet the existing infrastructure, culture, and reward system rarely support such claim. It is the last driver of value shift, the role that employees play in sustaining above average returns, that will become the main theme of discussion in this paper. The paper will go over the reasons for the disenchanted employees and offer a lasting remedy that will maximize the probability of a holistic cure to this nagging problem that robs the corporation from its ability to achieve economic sustainability. This lasting remedy will come via the introduction of a new theory, i.e., the Unified Business Theory, that revolves around the employee, customer, and shareholder triangle and in particular, highlights the most pivotal component of all: the role that employees play in the company's sustained wealth creation.